JZ should face the music
AS I write this, news has just broken that the state of the nation address, which President Jacob Zuma was to deliver tomorrow, has been postponed.
It was the only logical thing to do for parliament’s presiding officers.
In a statement, they said recent developments, particularly the calls for disruption and/or postponement of the joint sitting, had been of great concern.
In all likelihood the event would have been disrupted.
The opposition was ready to pounce.
“There will be no state of the nation, it’s the motion of no confidence debate on Thursday,” EFF leader Julius Malema said on Monday.
“We don’t need the speaker to give us permission to debate the motion of no confidence.
“We have given her an opportunity and she failed,” he said.
This time, Zuma would not have been guaranteed support from the ANC benches.
The tide has turned against him and his back is against the wall. As a master strategist, Zuma knew this. According to the statement from parliament, when the presiding officers met him to ask for the postponement, they learnt that he was in fact writing to them to ask the same.
Indeed, as many have said before, it would have been nothing less than a farce to have a man with no credibility chart a way forward for the country.
He does not deserve the honour to address this beautiful nation of ours.
There can be no doubt that this week is a defining time for our democracy. Indeed tensions are high. We are on a knife’s edge. In one of his first interviews about the so-called leadership transition two weeks ago, ANC president Cyril Ramaphosa said the party was mindful not to humiliate Zuma.
“Whatever we do we need to deal with this matter with the level of maturity it requires, with the proper decorum and I will say we should never do it in a way that is going to humiliate President Zuma.”
On the one hand, this demonstrated that Ramaphosa may believe the narrative – real or perceived – that although Zuma is a deeply unpopular leader in large parts of the country he still holds significant influence in his home base of KwaZulu-Natal from where the ANC gets its most votes.
And so, Ramaphosa was probably convinced that although Zuma was dangerous for our country and democracy, when wounded he posed an even greater threat to the ANC’s electoral fortunes.
While this narrative is dominant, considering the deep divisions in the ANC in that province, I am not convinced that it is necessarily true.
Nonetheless, following much deliberation on Zuma’s fate last month, his party asked its top six leaders to go and – in typical ANC-speak – “engage the president on what is best for the country and the ANC”.
We are told Zuma showed them the proverbial middle finger, saying he had done nothing wrong and therefore had no reason to quit.
He went further to tell them that contrary to popular belief, the people loved him.
He would resign only when the national executive committee told him to do so.
With their tails between their legs, they returned to the national working committee, which subsequently threw the ball back in the hands of the party’s highest decision-making body.
Indeed by and large we are in unchartered territory. Zuma’s time is up. But his era remains an important lesson on the fallacy of ANC exceptionalism.
Ramaphosa’s plea not to humiliate Zuma also demonstrated that he is man whose strategies are largely rooted in the politics of yesteryear, in an ANC that ended when Thabo Mbeki left office.
When the party purged Mbeki as president of the republic almost a decade ago, he did not need much convincing.
In his resignation speech he said, “This service has at all times been based on the vision, the principles and values that have guided the ANC as it prosecuted a difficult and dangerous struggle in the decades before the attainment of our freedom in 1994.
“Among other things, the vision, principles and values of the ANC teach the cadres of this movement life-long lessons that inform us that wherever we are and whatever we do, we should ensure that our actions contribute to the attainment of a free and just society, the upliftment of all our people and the development of a South Africa that belongs to all who live in it,” Mbeki said.
In Ramaphosa’s mind, this is how ANC leaders ought to behave. Only it is not so anymore. He may have underestimated how far down the skids Zuma is prepared to take the ANC to avoid prosecution.
Ramaphosa placed an unrealistic expectation on a man who could no longer be bothered with the ANC itself, let alone the country.
Gone are the days when the ANC could afford to place a moral burden on its leaders to take selfless decisions based on a perceived greater good.
Zuma represented a new type of leader for whom personal survival is of utmost importance.
In brazen fashion, he demonstrated that this week.
There is therefore no plausible reason why he should not face all that is coming to him.